My Library

The material was hard and solid, and seemed to be made of huge plates of steel overlapping slightly and welded together. Each had a slight curvature as if: part of a globe. I tried to push through it, but could not. I went up, down, to the right, and to the left. I was absolutely sure my physical body lay beyond this barrier. After what seemed an hour of scratching, clawing, and pushing at this barrier, I prayed. I used every prayer I had ever learned, and made up a few special ones. And I meant every word more than I had ever meant anything in my life. I was that frightened. Nothing happened. I was still plastered against the barrier, unable to get through and back to my physical body. I panicked. I clawed, screamed, and sobbed. After this proved futile, I finally calmed down only out of emotional exhaustion. Feeling lost, I lay there and rested, clinging to the cold, hard wall I do not know how long I lay there until the ability to think objectively returned. But it did. I could not stay there forever —or at least I did not want to. It seemed an impossible situation. Where before had I encountered an apparently impossible situation? I remembered. Years before, a friend and I had purchased an airplane whose flight characteristics we did not know. The only reason we bought this particular plane was that it was cheap and in good condition. After several practice flights around the field, we decided to take it up for acrobatics. With borrowed parachutes, we took off and headed up to around ten thousand feet. We took it through several lazy eights, a few sloppy loops, and several spins. Everything seemed all right. After climbing back to altitude, we nosed the ship down slightly and popped stick and rudder to go into a snap roll. The next thing we knew, we were in a spin. We centered stick, and forward, the accepted recovery procedure. It had worked before beautifully. But not this time. The spin became flatter, faster, and was developing a whiplike action. Opposite rudder against the spin, bursts of power, none had any effect on the spin. If anything, the spin worsened and the ground was coming up fast.